Friday, July 1, 2016

Mr. Bean's theory of the physical comedy hero, never mind

As I mentioned in my blog post in July of 2015, I am working on an article on the humor in A Confederacy of Dunces. In that post, I appealed to anyone who might know the source of a list of qualities articulated in a documentary starring Rowan Atkinson. I was quite taken by the list of qualities of the physical comedy hero.

Since then, I have done a good deal of reading in the theory of comedy, and I have come to the conclusion that the list from the documentary is not correct. That list is an excellent description of characteristics for many heroes of physical comedy, but it does not actually define physical comedy. Many of the items in the list describe humor that is disparaging, which physical comedy often is. However, the basis of physical comedy is physicality, not disparagement.

So for all those of you who wrote in trying to help me with the source of the list .... wait, no one ever wrote in. Oh well, till next time.

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1 comment:

  1. UnknownJuly 24, 2016 at 1:14 AM

    Wait, someone wrote in! Vernon, I don't have anything on the comedy question, but, I appreciate the material you have put together on your blog. Purely out of personal interest, I've been looking at whether the names of characters in ACOD may allude to real persons. The one that intrigues me is Miss Inez in the opening chapter of ACOD, and whether that is a reference to Colette Inez. Both Colette Inez and JKT seem to have been at Hunter College in 1961. Perhaps JKT picked a future star at Hunter College, but, I haven't found anything linking JKT with Colette Inez. Thanks again for all your work in putting your blog together.

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